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Wedding Day Disappointment (A cry for help)
Pupator
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If you don't want to read this whole, long story - skip down to the last 3 paragraphs to see what I'm asking.
It's almost been six months since our wedding and almost everything was perfect. The ceremony and reception went off without a hitch and everyone had a good time. Six weeks later the photos came in...
But first some background. The MOTB found the photographer while working as a caterer at someone else's wedding. He was a really nice young man who seemed to know his stuff. When the proofs came in for that wedding we had a chance to see them and they were outstanding.
I did caution the MOTB that he was a bit too trendy for me (taking lots of photos at off-center angles, etc.) but she was convinced that he was the guy for us.
We were married in a rather large church with huge stained-glass windows. The wedding was in the later afternoon, so the light was a bit odd. Concerned about this, the MOTB called the photographer two weeks before the wedding and asked him about the lighting and expressed concern that it may be too dark if he didn't bring enough. He stated that there would be plenty of lighting and he did not need to bring any. She also went over with him the list of shots that were important to her.
The photographer called me and, having photographed one wedding myself (in other words, having done enough only to realize how difficult it is!) I expressed my concerns about the lighting and a few other things. He was able to address all of my fears (except that he was too trendy) to my satisfaction.
At the wedding everyone was impressed with the photographer. He was obviously very hard working and was all over the place - everywhere that anything was happening, he was there taking shots. He took 1100 pictures that afternoon (and he wasn't even allowed to shoot the parts between the Call to Worship and Benediction!).
Six weeks later the prints came in.
I was shocked. All of the formals taken in the church were far too dark. He had tried to compensate in photoshop and had blown out the whites of my brides dress. Blown out highlights and black shadows. There are hardly any usable formals. As expected he took tons of shots while "holding the camera crooked" and also shots that cut off the tops of people's heads.
The bride, MOTB, and MOTG were heartbroken, especially the MOTB who paid the bill ($2K). There were formal pictures with people with their eyes closed - he had done no work to fix closed eyes or sour expressions in photoshop. The ONLY picture he took of me and my mother as I walked her to her seat has her eyes closed. He had time to take several more if he had noticed that. Not to mention, he actually printed a proof of that and put it in our album!
I could (and have already) gone on and on about the disappointments. The MOTB spoke to him on the phone and he was shocked that we were unhappy. He, it seems, did not see anything wrong with the pictures. He was not willing to refund any money, but he did send me all of his original (unphotoshopped) files so that I could see if any could be salvaged.
Of course, he didn't print the filenames on the back of the proof prints, so the first thing I had to do was to spend several hours matching prints from the book (where the MOTB & MOTG marked which ones they wanted) with the files on my computer.
Now comes the process of trying to salvage as many as I can. This isn't so hard for me with some of them because I have a great deal of experience with PSP. The ones from the reception and the candid shots are relatively easy to fix.
What I'm not very good at, and worry about, are the formal shots. There are so many shadows and blown-out highlights that I don't know if I'm good enough with layers to make anything positive happen.
Are there any folks out there willing to perform an act of kindness for a stranger and take one or two of these pictures and see if you can help? Most of the poses have multiple shots, so I could send 2-3 images that (combined) should have everyone's eyes open and faces turned toward the camera. I certainly understand anyone who doesn't have time for this (especially this time of year), but I would really appreciate any help I could get.
It's almost been six months since our wedding and almost everything was perfect. The ceremony and reception went off without a hitch and everyone had a good time. Six weeks later the photos came in...
But first some background. The MOTB found the photographer while working as a caterer at someone else's wedding. He was a really nice young man who seemed to know his stuff. When the proofs came in for that wedding we had a chance to see them and they were outstanding.
I did caution the MOTB that he was a bit too trendy for me (taking lots of photos at off-center angles, etc.) but she was convinced that he was the guy for us.
We were married in a rather large church with huge stained-glass windows. The wedding was in the later afternoon, so the light was a bit odd. Concerned about this, the MOTB called the photographer two weeks before the wedding and asked him about the lighting and expressed concern that it may be too dark if he didn't bring enough. He stated that there would be plenty of lighting and he did not need to bring any. She also went over with him the list of shots that were important to her.
The photographer called me and, having photographed one wedding myself (in other words, having done enough only to realize how difficult it is!) I expressed my concerns about the lighting and a few other things. He was able to address all of my fears (except that he was too trendy) to my satisfaction.
At the wedding everyone was impressed with the photographer. He was obviously very hard working and was all over the place - everywhere that anything was happening, he was there taking shots. He took 1100 pictures that afternoon (and he wasn't even allowed to shoot the parts between the Call to Worship and Benediction!).
Six weeks later the prints came in.
I was shocked. All of the formals taken in the church were far too dark. He had tried to compensate in photoshop and had blown out the whites of my brides dress. Blown out highlights and black shadows. There are hardly any usable formals. As expected he took tons of shots while "holding the camera crooked" and also shots that cut off the tops of people's heads.
The bride, MOTB, and MOTG were heartbroken, especially the MOTB who paid the bill ($2K). There were formal pictures with people with their eyes closed - he had done no work to fix closed eyes or sour expressions in photoshop. The ONLY picture he took of me and my mother as I walked her to her seat has her eyes closed. He had time to take several more if he had noticed that. Not to mention, he actually printed a proof of that and put it in our album!
I could (and have already) gone on and on about the disappointments. The MOTB spoke to him on the phone and he was shocked that we were unhappy. He, it seems, did not see anything wrong with the pictures. He was not willing to refund any money, but he did send me all of his original (unphotoshopped) files so that I could see if any could be salvaged.
Of course, he didn't print the filenames on the back of the proof prints, so the first thing I had to do was to spend several hours matching prints from the book (where the MOTB & MOTG marked which ones they wanted) with the files on my computer.
Now comes the process of trying to salvage as many as I can. This isn't so hard for me with some of them because I have a great deal of experience with PSP. The ones from the reception and the candid shots are relatively easy to fix.
What I'm not very good at, and worry about, are the formal shots. There are so many shadows and blown-out highlights that I don't know if I'm good enough with layers to make anything positive happen.
Are there any folks out there willing to perform an act of kindness for a stranger and take one or two of these pictures and see if you can help? Most of the poses have multiple shots, so I could send 2-3 images that (combined) should have everyone's eyes open and faces turned toward the camera. I certainly understand anyone who doesn't have time for this (especially this time of year), but I would really appreciate any help I could get.
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Congrats on the Nuptials. Bummer of a story. Sure, I'll help you.
First, it'll help if you can link me to an example of what's "too-dark" for you. IOW, show me the badness that faces me
Then, you can send me a DVD with all the files, and I'll fix them up for you. I'll load them onto a SmugMug Gallery, no charge for the account, and then you can order all the prints you like.
Of course, no charge for any of this service. We'd be happy to do it.
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Andy's already offered to take care of you, so if that's all you need, then you can ignore the rest of my posting.
The way I've seen this forum (and other retouching forums) work is that you post a link to the originals of several photos that you want help/advice/retouches on and then people who like to do this stuff take a shot at their own retouches. In all cases, you get techniques for how to fix the photos yourself and in other cases, you can even ask the retoucher for the already retouched files.
You've piqued my curiousity for whether I can fix any of these, so I'd take a shot (when I had some time) if you posted some links to any originals.
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I second that.
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My offer still stands, too.
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Andy - it's funny actually, the reason I haven't been around in so long is that I sold my 828 and all my gear to buy the engagement ring. It was certainly worth it, but I see a DSLR on the horizon.
JFriend & BinaryFX - I went through the images last night and labeled all of the ones each mother picked out. I'll put up some originals in a gallery that I'll come back and link to in a few hours.
Andy - Check your PM.
Thanks again to the amazing SumgMug community.
Many of the shots are fine, except for the bizzare camera angles, but check out the formal poses - most are overexposed, oversaturated, and have shadows on faces. He cut off the tops of heads in many shots, etc. Note especially the shots of the bride with her bridesmaids and of me with my father. Also, we didn't ask for that many B&W, I think he just made them that way because he couldn't get the colors right.
I'm right now making a gallery of the non-post-processed images that I'm try to get prints of. Here's the link.
It seems to be an obsession!
Im sure your going to end up though with some great pictures, and the one thing he does seem to of captured is what a great day everyone had!
Congrats on your wedding.
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Yeah, sadly, that's the one thing I specifically asked him not to do. I said something to the effect of: "I know that your style is photojournalism, and you're going to take some shots at odd angles, but please make sure that you don't cut off the tops of people's heads."
*sigh*
Lord willing, I'll never have to worry about a wedding photog again.
I'm going to start working on some of the candids and non-formals myself tonight. I'm also sending Andy (an amazing man and friend, if you ask me) all of the images - so if you work on any and are really happy with your result, you might want to drop him a note so he doesn't work on one that you've already perfected!
I'll also create, and soon add a link to the end of this post, the gallery of unedited "rejects," in case you need someone's open eyes or anything else.
I should mention that my bride's dress is not pure white, but a light cream color. Don't read anything into that except that she has very pale skin!:D
Here's one I did. I did the basics of bringing the facial illumination into range (different correction on front row vs. back row) and then color correcting the skin. I also worked on removing a few skin blemishes and some of the shine from the flash.
I like the composition (except the cropped heads) and expressions in this photo. It has some other technical challenges (focus isn't spot on, depth of field is a bit shallow and the back left person is soft - probably an issue with his lens), but can still be treasured.
Here's the link to the full-size corrected one: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/116812608-O.jpg
Corrected version:
And the original:
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That's a personal choice based on either how you remember the real subjects or how you want it to look (how sun-tanned you want them to look). Since I don't know what their skin color really was and I can't use other references in the photo because it's not an overall white balance issue, I have to guess.
You could be right. After dropping the illumination on the faces, it was way too magenta, so I had to rebalance that with the yellow. There was also an issue where the front row of guys was different than the back row of guys (presumably due to extra flash illumination in the front) so I had to apply additional corrections to the back row.
Fortunately, it's very easy to tweak the yellow to taste. In RGB, just pull the blue curve up a tiny bit to remove a little yellow (adds blue which is the complement of yellow). Set the curve adjustment layer to the color blend mode if you don't want to affect luminosity at all.
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and the originals were too light and too pink... something inbetween perhaps?
It is interesting to see the number of photos taken and the number actually chosen by the relatives... I love this stuff!
I can't believe he didn't do some "burst" mode with your mom and you walking down the aisle, would have fixed the closed eye problem...
Overall, I don't think the photos are "that" bad, I've seen worse where people have paid even more.
Now is the time to ask your entire guest list to send you photos that they took!!!
Your bride's dress is very pretty, BTW and I love her wedding bouquet.
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IMO, the highlights on the wedding don't seem to be blown out to me (I can see all the embroidery). The suits may seem a little dark. It could just be my monitor.
IMO, I don't think your photographer did a horrible job.
Rando - you should see the prints. He didn't take blown-out pictures, he took underexposed pictures and then blew out the highlights in photoshop trying to correct his errors. Find a picture of the MOTB and FOTB (obviously, you don't know who they are) - but you can't. Can you imagine? There is no picture of the two of them? There's no usable picture of me and my father. He didn't even take dozens of the shots we'd asked for and agreed upon before the day. I have no desire to hurt the guy's feelings or ruin his reputation, which is why I haven't posted his name or company; but the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is terrible. But as jfriend has shown, with proper processing, they can turn out quite well.
I had to crop it for 8x10, so I used a clone brush to remove a distracting candle on the right. I used an adjustment layer to bring out the blues a bit and a correction layer to make the whites whiter.
Feedback?
And the original (sadly, I don't see a big difference apart from the crop)
This one, however, I'm having much more trouble getting right (#483). She asked for it at 5x7, but I don't think that works.
There seems to be a great deal that can be salvaged from these pictures. As others have pointed out the wacky, fashion-photographer angles are maddening. . . .
FWIW, this guy is not a photographer, he's a guy with a camera, and he's got NO BUSINESS charging people 2K for anything.
Good luck with the kind offers from the cool people on this board.
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That's some pretty strong side lighting there. If you "really" want a good photo you are going to have to make selections to the dark side of everyone's face, lighten the tone a little to match the "bright" side.
Have you tried shadow/highlight in Photoshop CS? That should help quite a bit. If not you can make a "contrast mask" (search in google) to do it the "old fashioned" way.
Since your wife is so fair (I have a very fair skinned daughter) I'd leave her alone, she looks fine, and work on the other people in the group.
Be interested to see what Andy comes up with! :-)
It is difficult, not knowing everyone's skin tone, how far to adjust. I noticed in one photo I looked at the ISO is rather high on the Canon 20D. That's one way, I guess to get around not having enough light.
I always tell my bride and groom (not that I do weddings anymore professionally) to get one or two people to act as photographer nags. They have the list of photos and follow the photographer around and make sure he/she is getting the shots the family wants. The Bride and Groom are too busy to be expected to do this on "their" day. I always ask who I can talk to if I have questions about photos, etc.
As I said, have your guest list send you their photos!
If I have some time I may try one photo. I'm actually working on a project this week so my time is limited.
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shadow/highlight, mask out the background (I like it darker) new layer pick up color of the black, paint over candles use darken mode. I then did a few hue/saturation layers, one separate mask for the older woman right of the bride. A few more things... In hue/saturation I took out all green and magenta, lighted the red and desaturated the red a little. Desaturated the yellow a little, and lightened it a tad.
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Improved (?):
Before:
After:
I still stand by my statement, it's not horrible, I've seen much worse $2K, but then again I've seen a whole lot better for free, check out some of the first timers at FM, http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/48
I think with a little creativity and pp, you can put together a very nice album with these shots.
Anyways on this photo, cropping seems a little tight to me, but it was tight to begin with. Maybe get a 8x12 instead of an 8x10?
Thanks for the encouraging words and the advice about the crop. I'll give it a try!
The use of a 17mm lens to do up close full length poses...not good. Unless you guys really are all very tall, and very skinny.
Did he shoot the wedding in jpg? Or did he use RAW and give you the converted jpgs? Because if he shot in jpg only...he's a fool.
I hope the gang here can salvage some of the photos for you, even one really good one will be priceless in the end.
These are done on my laptop (a bit different display than the IMac) but here are a couple:
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Weddings/Portraits and anything else that catches my eye.
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For those of you who have worked on images - would you be willing to e-mail me the original size version of your work?
paulsmail at gmail dot com
Thanks!
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Blessings to all for your continued help!